Peter Bohlin

Last night Mr Bohlin spoke eloquently about his life and his love of making things.

Loosely paraphrased - Here are the top 9  things visionary Peter Bohlin shared that stirred me.

1. He finds that the act of making is intriguing because through making things you come in to contact with the essence of their being
2. He explained "I think I am an architect because it was an escape. There was boulder by the house on the edge of the forest , as a child I imagined I lived under that rock”
3. When designing homes or anything - Don't be afraid to discover something you didn’t know was there.
4. Often Modernism looked like road kill. Perhaps intelligent but not satisfying.
5. Up until recently when it came to people's homes this formula applies Available Materials + weather = inevitable design. Consider the similarities between houses of the American South west Pueblos and Residents of the Gobe desert. Another example the people who live in the Marshes in Iraq
   Technology has allowed us to be less connected – good and bad.
6. He has heard that God is in the details, and a lawyer told him the Devil is in the details – He is only sure that someone is in the details.
7. Allow people to have things that they can interpret within your design. Its good to do things you are not sure about.
8. How to please a client? They tell us about themselves, even if we are not looking. When you listen and you get it right, it is powerful because you touch their heart.
9. Most of all - His projects are just breathtaking! TAKE A LOOK!!!

Did you go on the tour of the Bohlin house today? Please share your experiences and thoughts below.



Craig Nova’s Charms and Terrors

Weaving the characters into place,

A two way mirror forms in his books.

Through imagination mysterious connections knit together

Readers find the same sweaters in their own emotional closets.

As writers we must define our terms, invoking our tough times,

Sometimes a Father’s death, the forms of love get stuck in the author's pen pointing to Dicken’s  “Charms and terrors” of writing.

Some stories can not be written no matter how many times you try,

Truth to a novelist is different than the facts,

Craig says “When you have to tell it just the way it happens, sometimes you can’t tell it.”

We journey with him through vignettes of happiness from his book.

Closing advice – “Write your truth, don’t worry so much about being truthful.”

“Craig Nova is a fine writer, one of our best,” writes Jonathan Yardley, book critic for the Washington Post. “If you haven’t read him, the loss is yours.” “He’s a novelist who has yet to write a supermarket bestseller…but he has written at least two American classics that will likely resonate after his death, the way the poor-selling ‘Great Gatsby’ did for poor ol’ F. Scott Fitzgerald,” writes David Bowman of Salon.com.

Some Beautiful Poems Greeting Us This Morning

The House of Belonging  by David Whyte

I awoke this morning in the gold light turning this way

 and that thinking for moment it was one way like any other.

But the veil had gone from my darkened heart and I thought

it must have been the quiet candlelight that filled my room,

it must have been the first easy rhythm with which I breathed myself to sleep,

it must have been the prayer I said speaking to the otherness of the night.

And I thought this is the good day you could meet your love,

this is the black day someone close to you could die.

This is the day you realize how easily the thread is broken between this world
and the next and I found myself sitting up in the quiet pathway of light,

the tawny close grained cedar burning round me like fire
and all the angels of this housely heaven ascending through the first roof of light
the sun has made.

This is the bright home in which I live,
this is where I ask my friends to come,
this is where I want to love all the things
it has taken me so long to learn to love.

This is the temple of my adult aloneness
and I belong to that aloneness as I belong to my life.

There is no house like the house of belonging.

Lost by David Wagner

Stand still. The trees ahead & bushes behind you
Are not lost. Wherever you are is called Here,
And you must treat it as a powerful stranger,
Must ask permission to know it and be known.
The forest breathes. Listen. It answers,
I have made this place around you.
If you leave it, you may come back again, saying Here.

No trees are the same to Raven.
No two branches are the same to Wren.
If what a tree or a bush is is lost on you,
You are surely lost. Stand still. The forest knows
Where you are. You must let it find you.

The Lake Isle of Innisfree Yeats

I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,

And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made;

Nine bean rows will I have there, a hive for the honey bee,

And live alone in the bee-loud glade.

And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,

Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;

There midnight's all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,

And evening full of the linnet's wings.

I will arise and go now, for always night and day

I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;

While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements gray,

 I hear it in the deep heart's core.

Cultural Constructs expressed in Construction - The Education of an Architect

Architect Witold Rybczynski spoke about the The Education of an Architect.

He shared that the Architecture of our houses has a dynamic history over time and culture that reflects our relationships with eachother and our thoughts about the world.

Fashion vs. Custom vs. Culture

Fashion changes quickly  in a cyclical manner

Décor  swings back and forth from fussy to simple

Customs change more slowly than Fashion

Clothing (Hats, Ties, Gloves) – Kennedy refused the Top Hat, Obama first president to be seen without a tie

Use of the house –  Parlors, Front rooms to Living rooms to Family Rooms

Culture changes very, very slowly – in a 100 years

Deeply Engaged Feelings we share

Home is not a word universal to all languages.

·         Home = Western European Northern Hemisphere Cultural concept

·         During the Middle Ages there is no separation between private space and public space in house.

o        Furniture moved to suit the time of day – beds and tables in same area.

·         The Concept of our homes being a safe haven is a construct that came out of 17^th Century Holland.

o       Bedrooms and Corridors first invention for privacy at that time

• More attention paid to art and decorating

Comfort  and Physical wellbeing were 18^th century concepts

·         No one even expected to be comfortable. Comfort came around once in a while but most of the time you felt miserable. (Everyone had toothaches)

·         Furniture – Medieval chairs are not built for comfort, they are designed to convey one’s status at court

(Fancy chair – Stool – Stand)

·         18^th century concept of physical wellbeing  Jane Austen played with the term “Comfort” with the same novel awe as “high tech” has today.

Ideal of Domesticity rose in 19^th century

·         Rise of Industrial revolution and bourgeois involved separation of work and home

·         House became more of the domain of women

·         Women became the keepers of the home as safe haven

20^th Century value of Convenience – American ideal that spread elsewhere

·         Lack of servants required the invention of greater efficiency in housekeeping for middle/upper middle class lifestyle

·         Spurred development of many Appliances and changed layouts of kitchens

·         1920’s-30’s Domestic Engineers – Scientifically studied how to structure a good kitchen via time studies

Susan Cooper - Beats the Heather for Us

Susan Cooper was the opening speaker for 2011’s Gathering. She likened the task of being the opening speaker in a most original and apt way. 

In the tradition of English grouse hunting there are people with the task of whacking at the heather to flush the birds up into the air for others to shoot. These people are called “beaters”.

As the first speaker at The Gathering, Ms. Cooper saw it as her role to coax as many metaphors as possible on the topic of  “Home” into the air before us in preparation for our further exploration through out the weekend.

Susan accomplished this task with wit and compassion.  She brought us on a journey of her own memories and the eloquent words of others. Here is a sampling of the lovely conceptual birds sprung from her imaginative heather.

Home as sanctuary, refuge

• A plaque that hung in her house held a quote from John Ruskin:“Home is the place of Peace; the shelter, not only from all injury, but from all terror, doubt, and division. In so far as it is not this, it is not home.”
• As  a child in WWII England, she spent time in a bomb shelter behind her home. She likened it to the kind of place the Mole from the Wind in the Willows would reside.

Home changes as you move from child to adult

• There is home of your origin full of the emotion of becoming who you are.
• The places you live after you leave home, even if comfortable can never be the same as the home you came from.
• In memory your first home doesn’t change.

Home is where you belong

• “Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in.”  Robert Frost

Home is being with the people you love.

• “Home is where the heart is.”

Being apart from your home is painful

·         Immigrant form enclaves partly to maintain an essence of what home had been.

·         Susan Cooper introduced us to the Welsh word “Hiraeth” word to describe the kind of pain  being away from home.  Hiraeth doesn't translate well into English. It is a deep longing for home on the level of grief. It is pronounced with two syllables. The first is like the English here except that the r is stronger. The second syllable is like how a mathematician would pronounce i-th as in the ith row of a matrix. You could also say eye-th.

Home is something you must leave, but then also return to

·         If one is to grow home must be replaced over and over again.

·         No such thing as easy growth unless you are a dandelion.

·         Home can be an Octopus, snare, venus fly trap if you have no courage to leave.

Death is the final home coming – Returning to the Earth

• Susan ended with this gaelic poem.

“Thou goest home this night to thy home of winter,

To thy home of autumn, of spring and of summer;

Thou goest home this night to they perpetual home,

To thine eternal bed, to thine eternal slumber.

The sleep of the seven lights be thine, O brother,

The sleep of the seven joys be thine, O brother,

The sleep of the seven slumbers be thine, O brother,

On the arm of the Jesus of blessings, the Christ of grace.”

Please add more to this post! What metaphors or concepts did Susan mention that I failed to capture? What other concepts or metaphors of home resonate most for you?

SUSAN COOPER is an English-born writer best-known for her children's books, notably the fantasy sequence The Dark is Rising, which won assorted awards,  including the Newbery Medal.

The Gathering Invocation

Vibrant Invocation – Home in the Heartland

Nathaniel and Jacob Parkman performed  Irish dances to evoke the spirit of home through their interpretation of  "Home in the Heartland." I offer this poem to celebrate their wonderful performance:

Two young men take the stage,

Two young men stand stock straight and serious,

Two young men bob and float,
Two young men clomp and stomp their deft feet,

Two young boys leave the stage share a high five for another fine performance.

They shared one of their favorite songs with us:

Homecoming at The Gathering

Our theme this year is -  "PHYSICAL AND METAPHYSICAL HOME: MEMORY, GRACE, AND STRUCTURE".

Anytime fancy words like "Metaphysical" are trotted out, I start limbering up for some mental gymnastics. To be sure I knew what I was talking about I went and looked up "Metaphysics" in the Dictionary:

• Metaphysics - "the philosophical study of the nature of reality, concerned with such questions as the existence of God, the external world, etc".

Wow! There is nothing I love more than ruminating about the nature of reality. But to be honest, I have floundered a bit with the abstraction of this theme until I was inspired at dinner tonight.

During her introduction, Charlotte Ravioli mentioned how Keystone College President Dr. Edward G. Boehm, Jr has fostered a greater awareness of the school's history. Specifically that in 1868 the founders of Keystone Academy chose to start the school as a memorial to all the souls from this area that did not return from the Civil War. 

 MEMORY + GRACE = STRUCTURE

• MEMORY The memory of those who did not return home
• GRACE  the kindness of those remembering the ones they lost
• STRUCTURE brought this school and this event into being.

Through the farsighted kindness of those remembering their loved ones a far reaching legacy emerged - Keystone College.
This may be an overly literal interpretation of our theme this year, but it works for me.   
How do you interpret the theme of "PHYSICAL AND METAPHYSICAL HOME: MEMORY, GRACE, AND STRUCTURE"? 

Please feel free to comment.

The Gathering 2011 Writing Project

The Gathering, July 14-17, 2011 is coming soon, but perhaps not soon enough for some of us. The theme “Physical and Metaphysical Home: Memory, Grace and Structure” offers much fodder for those with an active imagination.

With the intention of enjoying and connecting with each other prior to those anticipated days in July, let's write a short story together.

How it works:

1.      Respond to the prompt below by posting a comment on the Gathering Facebook Fanpage.

2.      Read the responses others have posted there and click on “like” for the ones you like the best

3.      After a review period we will close for voting and amend the story with the most popular selection, adding it to the text body (on the Gathering blog) 

4.      The next prompt for input is posted for commentary. (rinse and repeat and soon our shared story has emerged!)

5.      If you have feedback for how to make this work better or editorial suggestions as we go along not specific to the initial prompt, email here.

Some loose guidelines:

1.      Responses should be your own text, not excerpted from others’ published works.

2.      Please select the topic and wording that are respectful to others and reasonably “Facebook”.  

3.      Restrict your response to no more than 1 paragraph.

Let's start with this intro (append where indicated below)

 Adele was in the bedroom of her prim house in Conneticut, sorting through her closet and chest of drawers. She was preparing for a much-anticipated road trip with her best friend.  Even though this travel was planned months in advance, her packing was a last minute rush job. Even in the summer it was impossible to pack light when spending a few days in Northeastern Pennsylvania. The weather changes so much within a few hours, especially up in those endless mountains.

She found the duffle bag on wheels in her son Eric's room. He left it behind from his college sports days. It was just right for this type of adventure. Shorts, long pants, capris, flip flops, wedge heels, walking shoes, trench coat, sleeveless blouse, quarter length boat neck tee, cardigan - that bag could hold it all. 

 Janet, her companion on this trip, was the type who was always punctual. Adele expected her to arrive any minute, proudly displaying her new hybrid car. They were off to another writer's conference. Now that they were retired, these had become a tradition. They both found it a fun way to tour the highways and byways, meet interesting people and see their favorite authors up close.  But the conference in the sleepy town of LaPlume was the one where they met 8 years ago and it had a nostalgia to it. They looked forward to it more than others.

Add to the story here by posting a response on the Gathering FanPage Here: Janet arrives 15 minutes late, something unusual has happened to her on the way. What was it?